The accused had approached the SC after the Rajasthan High Court rejected his anticipatory bail plea. (File Photo)The Supreme Court has granted anticipatory bail to a man accused of rape by a woman who had been having a relationship with him for four years, saying that after having willingly lived with him, she cannot now allege rape if the relationship is not working out.
A bench of Vikram Nath and Hemant Gupta noted that the complainant woman’s case was that she was in a relationship with the man for four years and that her counsel had admitted that she was 21 years old when the relationship started.
“In view of the said fact, the complainant has willingly been staying with the appellant and had the relationship. Therefore, now if the relationship is not working out, the same cannot be a ground for lodging an FIR for the offence under Section 376(2)(n) IPC,” the SC said.
Besides rape, he has also been accused of committing unnatural offences (Section 377) and criminal intimidation (Section 506).
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The accused had approached the SC after the Rajasthan High Court rejected his anticipatory bail plea. Setting aside the HC order, the SC made clear that the “observations in the present order are only for the purposes of deciding the pre-arrest bail application” and that “the investigation shall proceed uninfluenced by the observations made in the present order”.
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